Posts in ‘Mobile’

Like all the other team members here at TPI I’m addicted to sharing and consuming data. I wake up, check Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email, then (if I have time) I play some Angry Birds.  Throughout a typical day, I check Facebook way too much, tweet more than the average person, read a couple blog posts, check in to wherever I eat lunch, send 50+ emails and exchange instant messages with my coworkers.  As a person who works in the social media world each day, I understand that I might visit these sites and share more data than the typical person, but depending on what kind of business you’re in, there are many ways data plays a part in your everyday life and for your company.

Consider the following infographic, courtesy of DOMO.

How Much Data We Share Each Day

While all this data may seem overwhelming, the team at Thoughtprocess Interactive can help you understand it and make your company, website design or social media strategy stand out from the rest.  Contact us today to see what your business strategy has been missing.

Picture this: I’m walking through the park with my dog last week and my phone rings.  I take my phone out of my pocket to answer it and I can’t.  Why not?  Because I have gloves on.  I made it work by using the tip of my nose but you can just imagine how silly I looked!

For the rest of my very cold walk through the park I took my gloves off so I could text, take a picture of my dog and answer my phone…I might have been able to do all this with my nose but I choose not to look like an idiot and just let my hand freeze.

Fast forward to last night when I’m Christmas shopping at Target and I happen to come across the perfect present for everyone who has a smartphone:  TOUCH SCREEN GLOVES!  How did I not know about these before?  I ended up buying a pair for all my friends and family with smartphones – which is everyone.  So after my semi-expensive trip to Target, I Googled these gloves and it turns out they are everywhere!

While I realize you (or my boss, hi James!) are probably thinking this has absolutely nothing to do with what we do here at Thoughtprocess Interactive, consider this:  Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.  That means if you want to get on the internet anytime during the winter in the future (without your hands freezing off) you may want to invest in these touchscreen-friendly gloves.

Or you can just use your nose.

Check out these web sites:

http://2011.uxlondon.com/
http://www.saltercane.com/

Any person or company with a consumer-facing web site, if they are paying any attention at all, will want their site to be mobile phone accessible soon if not sooner. Assuming 1024 pixel wide screens isn’t going to cut it, these two sites show how it can be done really well in just one smart design, rather than the usual way (sniffing out the client browser and redirecting mobile phones to a different version).

Resize your browser and watch what happens as it get narrower. (Use Firefox or a webkit browser like Safari — IE need not apply.) The first site re-flows in each section and the bio pictures shrink down as the page gets narrower. The second site dynamically re-flows from three columns to two columns to one.  If you have a browser on your mobile phone, look at the sites there too. Very cool!

You can read about the technique from the guy who designed those sites here:

http://adactio.com/journal/

Something to think about.

I came across this the other day on a blog somewhere and thought it was a great example of clever interactive marketing: It seems Charmin has become the “sponsor” of a little site called sitorsquat.com. Essentially, this site (which has existed in some form since ’07) uses Google maps to locate the closest public restroom to an address entered by a user.

Now, thanks to Charmin, users can download free mobile applications for iPhones and BlackBerrys that use GPS to show you the way to the nearest public pit stop. Not only will you get location, Sit or Squat also lets users rate each restroom based on ick-factor (an average rating above 2.5 is “sit,” below “squat”) so you can avoid less than stellar accommodations (if you have the luxury of being picky).

Being a toilet paper company, this is obviously a great fit for Charmin, and it’s getting them a lot of buzz on blogs and other traditional media outlets-which is the point, of course. What’s so interesting about it though, is that Sit or Squat was a pre-existing site – the lesson being that you don’t necessarily need to be a corporate giant for a good, common-sense interactive site or application to pay off. Certainly, Charmin’s saving some cash by avoiding the cost of custom application development and Sit or Squat now has a corporate sponsor to finance their brainchild and tell the world about it. It’s a win-win.

Okay, so that’s just my overly-snide first-take on this article about iPhone apps.

My second take is that I can’t decide whether this is a positive commentary on iPhone users (i.e. they know useless crap once they’ve seen it and never look back), or a somewhat less flattering one (they have an endless and apparently purposeless appetite for the latest gimicky digital froth).

I dunno. You guys tell me what you think.

Full disclosure: The device in my pocket was purchased when you still called them “cell phones” and they all had hinges in the middle, so this post might just be my pent-up gadget-envy lashing out at my luddite wallet.

http://cli.gs/Hm12bV

Some interesting facts in here. I was kind of surprised that Yahoo Mail is the most popular mobile website in the US and that the Motorola Razrs (curse them) are the most owned devices among mobile internet users in the US.